A Small Thing by Tommy Dean

“You sure you want to do this?” he asked.

She sat her fork on the table. “Get married?”

“No,” he said. “Have the picnic afterward.”

The day after the wedding they had decided to hold a going away party. They’d be moving across the country to North Carolina at the end of the month and didn’t know when they’d be back in Indiana to see everyone.

“We can afford it,” she said. She’d had to convince him along the way to spend the extra dollar here and there. She wondered if this wasn’t really about the chocolate fountain again.

“But all those people in one place…what if I get stuck in a conversation with your Uncle Buck?”

“I’ll come to the rescue,” she said. “I’ll even write it into my vows.” She swatted his butt, while he scrubbed at a greasy pan. She hated doing the dishes, couldn’t stand to touch someone else’s discarded food. Though it took him longer than she would like—he waited until both sinks were full and the smell of souring food wafted around the apartment—she loved that he did it for her.

“The food…” he started.

“You’re the only guy I know,” she said, “who would care about this.”

“Come on. She deserves to eat,” he said. He swished his hand around in the water rattling plates and glasses. He picked up a fork, raked the rag across its tines and tossed it with too much force into the other side of the sink.

“I’m not making special considerations for one person. It doesn’t make sense,” she said.

“She’s my friend,” he said, his voice low over the sound of colliding dishes.

“I’m telling you, she’ll eat before she even gets there,” she said, moving over to the table and sitting down. She played with the solitaire that had sat on her hand since March, the weight now becoming familiar as it crept closer and closer to the end of summer.

“If this was Emily or Rachel, you’d already be bent over backwards,” he said.

“My friends are different and you know it,” she said.

“How?” He turned his back on the dishes and faced her, putting his soapy hands on his hips.

“You know why.”

“No, I don’t think I do. Come on, let’s get this out in the open,” he said.

“Listen, baby,” she said. Neither of them understood why people used that word as an endearment. “She’ll just have to take care of herself, she really will.”

“But she shouldn’t have to. My only friend and we can’t even do this small thing,” he said, turning back to the dishes.

“She’ll make do, because you promised you wouldn’t invite her.”

“Jesus,” he said. “I thought you were past that. It was two years ago.”

“Two years ago or not, I’d rather not have to compete with her on my wedding day.”

“I can’t just not invite a friend,” he said.

“No you could, but you won’t and the worst part is you don’t see anything wrong with it,” she said.

“One kiss,” he said, and stopped, the silence hanging between like the first time he’d told her, except now they weren’t holding hands, weren’t half drunk on that red wine that came from the box.

“It was a small thing,” he said.

“Not as small as this.”

Bio: Tommy Dean is a supplanted Mid-Westerner living in the heart of North Carolina. A graduate of the Queens University of Charlotte MFA program, he has been previously published in Pens on Fire, Tuesday Shorts, Apollo’s Lyre, and Pindeldyboz.